Tessa Vermeulen gets excited about Hai, and even more so about her New York City pop-up, like a little girl going to the store in mom’s heels and pearls. Consequently, her ready-to-wear collection allows grown women to again feel the giddiness only aroused by mom’s closet, but while remaining chic, oh so chic, and always feeling the softness of silk against skin.
With Hai there’s none of this sweatpants business. Regardless if you choose to lounge around in a silk tank and stretch-waistband pants, it’s still not loungewear. You could just as easily ‘lounge’ in the lobby of the Ritz as your own living room.
Since fully launching Hai last year, Tessa’s life has become ‘bus, club, another club, another club, another club, plane, next place, no sleep.’ Except it’s the Hai remix, which sounds more like, ‘dinner party, photoshoot, another dinner party, another shoot, next pop-up, no sleep, still no sleep.’
But such is the glamorous illusion of fashion, explained here amongst the Au Boulot-clad workers at Cafe Gitane.
TV: I worked in music from when I was 18 - 29
BSC: In what capacity?
TV: Always more on the producing side. It started when I was a teenager in Shanghai working for a promoter that opened an underground nightclub. I DJ’d, there were a lot of fashion events, but this is my past life.
BSC: So you can spin, right? That’s what I’m hearing?
TV: I can, I still can, but the last time I did was probably eight years ago.
BSC: It would be incredibly cool if you did a pop-up and you DJ’d the event.
TV: No, no, no - not gonna happen! Those days have passed, but it was a great learning experience during those days in Shanghai from around 2009-2014 when the music scene was changing and we were bringing in a lot of international artists.
BSC: Did you bring your own cultural heritage to the table in music in Shanghai?
TV: No, not necessarily mine, but mainly electronic music from all over the world. We got the guitarist from Jefferson Airplane even. I had the best time with them. Because I was this nineteen year old girl showing these guys around my Shanghai for four days, and they were playing an intimate venue with only a hundred people. And still the tour manager sent me personal correspondence for years updating me on their tour schedule. You just meet so many people all over the world.
BSC: I’m sure it’s incredibly cool and a little humbling to look back on what you were doing at nineteen, and looking today at the young generation - my generation - knowing that the majority of them can’t begin to compare with the stories you were telling from your own life a decade ago. Most of them don’t do jack.
TV: But no, it was amazing. And I was going to university at the same time which was not that interesting. I went to (primary) school in Holland and then wanted to go to London College of Fashion, but I didn’t even apply because I wanted to take a gap year. Around that time my parents moved to Shanghai, and I decided to spend the year there. But then I fell in love with the city, and I didn’t want to leave. So I had to stay there for school.
But the only major they offered at the University in English was a business degree, so I doubled with business and Chinese.
BSC: Well business worked out well in the end. Are you still fluent?
TV: I used to be good, highly conversational. I stayed in music, moved to London, did a masters of business in music, and continued working full time in that industry until after the pandemic, which I used to launch Hai. I didn’t really like the male-domianted, very commercial music business in London that was all about making money versus in Shanghai it felt like we were doing something good.
BSC: So what would you have majored in at LCF?
TV: Fashion design, definitely fashion design. I really started planning the brand when I was 25, drawing and writing things down, but I kept my full time job until a year and a half ago. It was like living a double life - I’d have orders in my backpack that I’d take to the post office on my break, fulfilling everything myself, and no one had any idea that I was meeting with Browns and Selfridges on my lunch break.
BSC: Isn’t that the best? Living this double life and no one has any idea that you’re basically two different people.
TV: Yeah - it was living a double life. But at that time I was still feeling very insecure about Hai because I don’t have a proper fashion background and I didn’t always know what I was doing. Then Covid hit and work slowed down for me, which gave me more time to spend working on Hai.
But at that time I was still feeling very insecure about Hai because I don’t have a proper fashion background and I didn’t always know what I was doing. Then Covid hit and my company fired so many people, but kept me. It was great! Because I had like one meeting a week, and was still getting income to pay for the flat I had just bought with my boyfriend, and I could spend all of my time on Hai.
BSC: Covid really screwed some people, but at the same time, some people really lucked out.
TV: Yeah and I lucked out big time, it was nice to have the time to focus on the brand. During the pandemic the brand really picked up in China and Korea so I was able to quit my job in Spring of ‘21.
I went back to my parents’ in Shanghai, created two bags that I then brought back to London and started working on. But all revenue had to stay in the company in order for it to grow.
Because what I initially wanted with the idea of Hai was to start as ready-to-wear, but I realized that wasn’t feasible - launching a full collection and working a minimum wage job in the music industry. So we started with bags.
BSC: It’s better to do fewer things well than many things poorly.
TV: My friend Asel Tambay ho is a super talented graphic designer, does a lot of branding for Hai..
BSC: Did she do the logo? I love the logo. It’s so simple.
TV: She did, she does so much of our branding. She’s an art director at the Zak Group in London that handles clients like Prada, Paco Rabanne, Rimowa. She’s incredible. So she helped with ID-ing us.
Then one day I was at a flea market and I saw a silk bag that brought back all these memories of the things my dad would bring back from his trips to Asia and I said, ‘Okay, we’re changing strategies. We’re going to start with bags.’ We mocked up a design for what that would look like, and then found a manufacturer to make the bags that we still actually work with.
I really had to convince the manufacturer to work with me! Because obviously they wanted to know what we were going to do for them, and I said, just trust me. Now they’re so thankful because they’ve had to hire more people just to work on Hai - it’s amazing.
BSC: It’s great when you help other people that took a chance on you. Where are your factories?
TV: This one is in the south of China, and then we get the silk from Suzhou near Shanghai. A twenty minute train ride away. This is all pre-Covid, 2017 and 2018. Then the difficult thing that was happening during Covid was being unable to travel and source materials and find factories, so we started working with a local studio in East London, who are amazing.
Now of course we kind of manufacture all over the world - Romania, France, China, and India now as well.
BSC: India - for textiles and such?
TV: Yes, Our silk is sourced in China but the duppion silk is hand spun in India, and then we often also source deadstock silks from all over the world.
These guys come to London all the time; beautiful embroidery and silks that we’re going to be using for the next collection.
BSC: You’re wearing it right now it seems - aren’t you cold? Or didn’t you say it has both natural cooling and heating ‘mechanisms’?
TV: Yes, it’s a natural fiber so it does both.
BSC: That’s one, very, not-so-hot thing to come out of the pandemic; everyone living in their pajamas and gym clothes.
TV: I don’t own one pair of sweatpants. Exactly zero.
I don’t own one pair of sweatpants. Exactly zero.
BSC: I was recently talking to Paris Starn at a shoot for T Magazine, who although she’s known for her food Instagram and for being a chef, attempted to launch a ready-to-wear line called Paris99 just before the pandemic came crashing down on the world of fashion. And her launch in February of 2019 had great press, but ultimately she had no choice but to shut the clothing line down because as she said, the dresses were not comfortable, and were for wearing when you wanted to be seen - which people neither wanted to be seen or be uncomfortable at any point in the following two years.
TV: I mean I made a pair of pants with a stretch waistband - but they’re still silk. I’ve done them in white and black and it’s pretty much all I wear. They have quite a drop crotch so you can wear them low or high waisted. These look great on everyone and we even have a similar pair with a zipper on the side that my mom and grandmother wear all the time.
BSC: Is that important to you as a brand to make clothes that someone of any age feels comfortable in?
TV: It’s great that someone at any age can wear them comfortably. They’re playful, yes, but they’re very classic and made from good fabrics, good quality materials.
BSC: Because I was scrolling through your ‘Hai Society’ girls on your website and it made me think more about who your market is?
TV: I would say twenties to forties.
BSC: It’s very day-to-night, versatile.
TV: It’s versatile, and that’s what I love so much about being at the shop (New York pop-up). Everyone styles it differently, and it’s so inspiring. And everyone coming in has been really great trying things on and saying how they’d wear it - I’m always taking mental notes. It allows me to see our customers while having a brand that’s mainly online.
BSC: You’re seeing your customer base outside of Korea. Which is far.
TV: So far!
BSC: I guess that’s what Instagram is for - mediating that space between being just an online shopper and a customer with individual tastes and personality.
TV: But it’s still not the same. Instagram is still such a small part of it all.
BSC: Have you thought about your next pop-up?
TV: We’re going to do one in London next, a little longer than this one - maybe two to four months?
BSC: Is that something you would like to do soon?
TV: In the spring, maybe March to June. In Shoreditch, they have a street that’s kind of the equivalent of Elizabeth St. You get tourists and locals.
BSC: And college kids with Guildhall and City College.
TV: Because I think being in (London) Soho is quite different from here, but we are an East London based brand, so I like the idea of keeping the pop-up in East London.
At one point I would love to open a store in Shanghai as well.
BSC: Because it’s so intrinsic to your brand, which by the way, reminds me of this book by Dominique Loreau called L’Art de la Simplicité, that describes her cross cultural journey from France to Japan and discovering the ability to declutter her life physically and mentally along the way.
TV: Wait, I need to write this down. Okay. I must read this. I’m quite a simple person, and you can see it in the clothes as well, how they’re classic. But obviously being around new people and traveling inspires me.
BSC: So you like New York?
TV: I find it a much easier city than London. I’ve been here for three weeks now and every day I like it more and more. Getting around.
BSC: Yes, the NYC MTA is something.
TV: People are much nicer, friendlier, and they’re just more welcoming. In London it’s hard to find friends, but here everyone is just inviting me to dinner!
BSC: These Americans and their post-Covid sensibilities, starved for human interaction, not leaving our houses.
TV: But I miss cooking every meal at home, no (social) pressure at all, none. Now I don’t even have time to cook one meal per week. But in a few years I’m sure we’ll all look back at this quite fondly.
BSC: You’re in your ‘starving artist’ era - not because you’re not doing well, but because you’re just out of time to feed yourself!
TV: My next mission for the year: to relax more. Because Hai has grown quite quickly, just one year ago we were hiring our first employee and now we’re seven and global. And I still oversee everything, all the processes. I need to learn that I don’t need to be there for everything. Our team includes, PR, marketing, do-it-alls, graphic designers, and part-time sales. I’m doing all the wholesale stuff myself and I’ve never done anything like this before!
My next mission for the year: to relax more. Because Hai has grown quite quickly, just one year ago we were hiring our first employee and now we’re seven and global. And I still oversee everything, all the processes. I need to learn that I don’t need to be there for everything. Our team includes, PR, marketing, do-it-alls, graphic designers, and part-time sales. I’m doing all the wholesale stuff myself and I’ve never done anything like this before!
Tessa Vermeulen gets excited about Hai, and even more so about her New York City pop-up, like a little girl going to the store in mom’s heels and pearls. Consequently, her ready-to-wear collection allows grown women to again feel the giddiness only aroused by mom’s closet, but while remaining chic, oh so chic, and always feeling the softness of silk against skin.
With Hai there’s none of this sweatpants business. Regardless if you choose to lounge around in a silk tank and stretch-waistband pants, it’s still not loungewear. You could just as easily ‘lounge’ in the lobby of the Ritz as your own living room.
Since fully launching Hai last year, Tessa’s life has become ‘bus, club, another club, another club, another club, plane, next place, no sleep.’ Except it’s the Hai remix, which sounds more like, ‘dinner party, photoshoot, another dinner party, another shoot, next pop-up, no sleep, still no sleep.’
But such is the glamorous illusion of fashion, explained here amongst the Au Boulot-clad workers at Cafe Gitane.
Tessa Vermeulen gets excited about Hai, and even more so about her New York City pop-up, like a little girl going to the store in mom’s heels and pearls. Consequently, her ready-to-wear collection allows grown women to again feel the giddiness only aroused by mom’s closet, but while remaining chic, oh so chic, and always feeling the softness of silk against skin.
With Hai there’s none of this sweatpants business. Regardless if you choose to lounge around in a silk tank and stretch-waistband pants, it’s still not loungewear. You could just as easily ‘lounge’ in the lobby of the Ritz as your own living room.
Since fully launching Hai last year, Tessa’s life has become ‘bus, club, another club, another club, another club, plane, next place, no sleep.’ Except it’s the Hai remix, which sounds more like, ‘dinner party, photoshoot, another dinner party, another shoot, next pop-up, no sleep, still no sleep.’
But such is the glamorous illusion of fashion, explained here amongst the Au Boulot-clad workers at Cafe Gitane.
TV: I worked in music from when I was 18 - 29
BSC: In what capacity?
TV: Always more on the producing side. It started when I was a teenager in Shanghai working for a promoter that opened an underground nightclub. I DJ’d, there were a lot of fashion events, but this is my past life.
BSC: So you can spin, right? That’s what I’m hearing?
TV: I can, I still can, but the last time I did was probably eight years ago.
BSC: It would be incredibly cool if you did a pop-up and you DJ’d the event.
TV: No, no, no - not gonna happen! Those days have passed, but it was a great learning experience during those days in Shanghai from around 2009-2014 when the music scene was changing and we were bringing in a lot of international artists.
BSC: Did you bring your own cultural heritage to the table in music in Shanghai?
TV: No, not necessarily mine, but mainly electronic music from all over the world. We got the guitarist from Jefferson Airplane even. I had the best time with them. Because I was this nineteen year old girl showing these guys around my Shanghai for four days, and they were playing an intimate venue with only a hundred people. And still the tour manager sent me personal correspondence for years updating me on their tour schedule. You just meet so many people all over the world.
BSC: I’m sure it’s incredibly cool and a little humbling to look back on what you were doing at nineteen, and looking today at the young generation - my generation - knowing that the majority of them can’t begin to compare with the stories you were telling from your own life a decade ago. Most of them don’t do jack.
TV: But no, it was amazing. And I was going to university at the same time which was not that interesting. I went to (primary) school in Holland and then wanted to go to London College of Fashion, but I didn’t even apply because I wanted to take a gap year. Around that time my parents moved to Shanghai, and I decided to spend the year there. But then I fell in love with the city, and I didn’t want to leave. So I had to stay there for school.
But the only major they offered at the University in English was a business degree, so I doubled with business and Chinese.
BSC: Well business worked out well in the end. Are you still fluent?
TV: I used to be good, highly conversational. I stayed in music, moved to London, did a masters of business in music, and continued working full time in that industry until after the pandemic, which I used to launch Hai. I didn’t really like the male-domianted, very commercial music business in London that was all about making money versus in Shanghai it felt like we were doing something good.
BSC: So what would you have majored in at LCF?
TV: Fashion design, definitely fashion design. I really started planning the brand when I was 25, drawing and writing things down, but I kept my full time job until a year and a half ago. It was like living a double life - I’d have orders in my backpack that I’d take to the post office on my break, fulfilling everything myself, and no one had any idea that I was meeting with Browns and Selfridges on my lunch break.
BSC: Isn’t that the best? Living this double life and no one has any idea that you’re basically two different people.
TV: Yeah - it was living a double life. But at that time I was still feeling very insecure about Hai because I don’t have a proper fashion background and I didn’t always know what I was doing. Then Covid hit and work slowed down for me, which gave me more time to spend working on Hai.
BSC: Covid really screwed some people, but at the same time, some people really lucked out.
TV: Yeah and I lucked out big time, it was nice to have the time to focus on the brand. During the pandemic the brand really picked up in China and Korea so I was able to quit my job in Spring of ‘21.
I went back to my parents’ in Shanghai, created two bags that I then brought back to London and started working on. But all revenue had to stay in the company in order for it to grow.
Because what I initially wanted with the idea of Hai was to start as ready-to-wear, but I realized that wasn’t feasible - launching a full collection and working a minimum wage job in the music industry. So we started with bags.
BSC: It’s better to do fewer things well than many things poorly.
TV: My friend Asel Tambay ho is a super talented graphic designer, does a lot of branding for Hai..
BSC: Did she do the logo? I love the logo. It’s so simple.
TV: She did, she does so much of our branding. She’s an art director at the Zak Group in London that handles clients like Prada, Paco Rabanne, Rimowa. She’s incredible. So she helped with ID-ing us.
Then one day I was at a flea market and I saw a silk bag that brought back all these memories of the things my dad would bring back from his trips to Asia and I said, ‘Okay, we’re changing strategies. We’re going to start with bags.’ We mocked up a design for what that would look like, and then found a manufacturer to make the bags that we still actually work with.
I really had to convince the manufacturer to work with me! Because obviously they wanted to know what we were going to do for them, and I said, just trust me. Now they’re so thankful because they’ve had to hire more people just to work on Hai - it’s amazing.
BSC: It’s great when you help other people that took a chance on you. Where are your factories?
TV: This one is in the south of China, and then we get the silk from Suzhou near Shanghai. A twenty minute train ride away. This is all pre-Covid, 2017 and 2018. Then the difficult thing that was happening during Covid was being unable to travel and source materials and find factories, so we started working with a local studio in East London, who are amazing.
Now of course we kind of manufacture all over the world - Romania, France, China, and India now as well.
BSC: India - for textiles and such?
TV: Yes, Our silk is sourced in China but the duppion silk is hand spun in India, and then we often also source deadstock silks from all over the world.
These guys come to London all the time; beautiful embroidery and silks that we’re going to be using for the next collection.
BSC: You’re wearing it right now it seems - aren’t you cold? Or didn’t you say it has both natural cooling and heating ‘mechanisms’?
TV: Yes, it’s a natural fiber so it does both.
BSC: That’s one, very, not-so-hot thing to come out of the pandemic; everyone living in their pajamas and gym clothes.
TV: I don’t own one pair of sweatpants. Exactly zero.
I don’t own one pair of sweatpants. Exactly zero.
BSC: I was recently talking to Paris Starn at a shoot for T Magazine, who although she’s known for her food Instagram and for being a chef, attempted to launch a ready-to-wear line called Paris99 just before the pandemic came crashing down on the world of fashion. And her launch in February of 2019 had great press, but ultimately she had no choice but to shut the clothing line down because as she said, the dresses were not comfortable, and were for wearing when you wanted to be seen - which people neither wanted to be seen or be uncomfortable at any point in the following two years.
TV: I mean I made a pair of pants with a stretch waistband - but they’re still silk. I’ve done them in white and black and it’s pretty much all I wear. They have quite a drop crotch so you can wear them low or high waisted. These look great on everyone and we even have a similar pair with a zipper on the side that my mom and grandmother wear all the time.
BSC: Is that important to you as a brand to make clothes that someone of any age feels comfortable in?
TV: It’s great that someone at any age can wear them comfortably. They’re playful, yes, but they’re very classic and made from good fabrics, good quality materials.
BSC: Because I was scrolling through your ‘Hai Society’ girls on your website and it made me think more about who your market is?
TV: I would say twenties to forties.
BSC: It’s very day-to-night, versatile.
TV: It’s versatile, and that’s what I love so much about being at the shop (New York pop-up). Everyone styles it differently, and it’s so inspiring. And everyone coming in has been really great trying things on and saying how they’d wear it - I’m always taking mental notes. It allows me to see our customers while having a brand that’s mainly online.
BSC: You’re seeing your customer base outside of Korea. Which is far.
TV: So far!
BSC: I guess that’s what Instagram is for - mediating that space between being just an online shopper and a customer with individual tastes and personality.
TV: But it’s still not the same. Instagram is still such a small part of it all.
BSC: Have you thought about your next pop-up?
TV: We’re going to do one in London next, a little longer than this one - maybe two to four months?
BSC: Is that something you would like to do soon?
TV: In the spring, maybe March to June. In Shoreditch, they have a street that’s kind of the equivalent of Elizabeth St. You get tourists and locals.
BSC: And college kids with Guildhall and City College.
TV: Because I think being in (London) Soho is quite different from here, but we are an East London based brand, so I like the idea of keeping the pop-up in East London.
At one point I would love to open a store in Shanghai as well.
BSC: Because it’s so intrinsic to your brand, which by the way, reminds me of this book by Dominique Loreau called L’Art de la Simplicité, that describes her cross cultural journey from France to Japan and discovering the ability to declutter her life physically and mentally along the way.
TV: Wait, I need to write this down. Okay. I must read this. I’m quite a simple person, and you can see it in the clothes as well, how they’re classic. But obviously being around new people and traveling inspires me.
BSC: So you like New York?
TV: I find it a much easier city than London. I’ve been here for three weeks now and every day I like it more and more. Getting around.
BSC: Yes, the NYC MTA is something.
TV: People are much nicer, friendlier, and they’re just more welcoming. In London it’s hard to find friends, but here everyone is just inviting me to dinner!
BSC: These Americans and their post-Covid sensibilities, starved for human interaction, not leaving our houses.
TV: But I miss cooking every meal at home, no (social) pressure at all, none. Now I don’t even have time to cook one meal per week. But in a few years I’m sure we’ll all look back at this quite fondly.
BSC: You’re in your ‘starving artist’ era - not because you’re not doing well, but because you’re just out of time to feed yourself!
TV: My next mission for the year: to relax more. Because Hai has grown quite quickly, just one year ago we were hiring our first employee and now we’re seven and global. And I still oversee everything, all the processes. I need to learn that I don’t need to be there for everything. Our team includes, PR, marketing, do-it-alls, graphic designers, and part-time sales. I’m doing all the wholesale stuff myself and I’ve never done anything like this before!
But at that time I was still feeling very insecure about Hai because I don’t have a proper fashion background and I didn’t always know what I was doing. Then Covid hit and my company fired so many people, but kept me. It was great! Because I had like one meeting a week, and was still getting income to pay for the flat I had just bought with my boyfriend, and I could spend all of my time on Hai.
Tessa Vermeulen gets excited about Hai, and even more so about her New York City pop-up, like a little girl going to the store in mom’s heels and pearls. Consequently, her ready-to-wear collection allows grown women to again feel the giddiness only aroused by mom’s closet, but while remaining chic, oh so chic, and always feeling the softness of silk against skin.
With Hai there’s none of this sweatpants business. Regardless if you choose to lounge around in a silk tank and stretch-waistband pants, it’s still not loungewear. You could just as easily ‘lounge’ in the lobby of the Ritz as your own living room.
Since fully launching Hai last year, Tessa’s life has become ‘bus, club, another club, another club, another club, plane, next place, no sleep.’ Except it’s the Hai remix, which sounds more like, ‘dinner party, photoshoot, another dinner party, another shoot, next pop-up, no sleep, still no sleep.’
But such is the glamorous illusion of fashion, explained here amongst the Au Boulot-clad workers at Cafe Gitane.
Tessa Vermeulen gets excited about Hai, and even more so about her New York City pop-up, like a little girl going to the store in mom’s heels and pearls. Consequently, her ready-to-wear collection allows grown women to again feel the giddiness only aroused by mom’s closet, but while remaining chic, oh so chic, and always feeling the softness of silk against skin.
With Hai there’s none of this sweatpants business. Regardless if you choose to lounge around in a silk tank and stretch-waistband pants, it’s still not loungewear. You could just as easily ‘lounge’ in the lobby of the Ritz as your own living room.
Since fully launching Hai last year, Tessa’s life has become ‘bus, club, another club, another club, another club, plane, next place, no sleep.’ Except it’s the Hai remix, which sounds more like, ‘dinner party, photoshoot, another dinner party, another shoot, next pop-up, no sleep, still no sleep.’
But such is the glamorous illusion of fashion, explained here amongst the Au Boulot-clad workers at Cafe Gitane.
Tessa Vermeulen gets excited about Hai, and even more so about her New York City pop-up, like a little girl going to the store in mom’s heels and pearls. Consequently, her ready-to-wear collection allows grown women to again feel the giddiness only aroused by mom’s closet, but while remaining chic, oh so chic, and always feeling the softness of silk against skin.
With Hai there’s none of this sweatpants business. Regardless if you choose to lounge around in a silk tank and stretch-waistband pants, it’s still not loungewear. You could just as easily ‘lounge’ in the lobby of the Ritz as your own living room.
Since fully launching Hai last year, Tessa’s life has become ‘bus, club, another club, another club, another club, plane, next place, no sleep.’ Except it’s the Hai remix, which sounds more like, ‘dinner party, photoshoot, another dinner party, another shoot, next pop-up, no sleep, still no sleep.’
But such is the glamorous illusion of fashion, explained here amongst the Au Boulot-clad workers at Cafe Gitane.
TV: I worked in music from when I was 18 - 29
BSC: In what capacity?
TV: Always more on the producing side. It started when I was a teenager in Shanghai working for a promoter that opened an underground nightclub. I DJ’d, there were a lot of fashion events, but this is my past life.
BSC: So you can spin, right? That’s what I’m hearing?
TV: I can, I still can, but the last time I did was probably eight years ago.
BSC: It would be incredibly cool if you did a pop-up and you DJ’d the event.
TV: No, no, no - not gonna happen! Those days have passed, but it was a great learning experience during those days in Shanghai from around 2009-2014 when the music scene was changing and we were bringing in a lot of international artists.
BSC: Did you bring your own cultural heritage to the table in music in Shanghai?
TV: No, not necessarily mine, but mainly electronic music from all over the world. We got the guitarist from Jefferson Airplane even. I had the best time with them. Because I was this nineteen year old girl showing these guys around my Shanghai for four days, and they were playing an intimate venue with only a hundred people. And still the tour manager sent me personal correspondence for years updating me on their tour schedule. You just meet so many people all over the world.
BSC: I’m sure it’s incredibly cool and a little humbling to look back on what you were doing at nineteen, and looking today at the young generation - my generation - knowing that the majority of them can’t begin to compare with the stories you were telling from your own life a decade ago. Most of them don’t do jack.
TV: But no, it was amazing. And I was going to university at the same time which was not that interesting. I went to (primary) school in Holland and then wanted to go to London College of Fashion, but I didn’t even apply because I wanted to take a gap year. Around that time my parents moved to Shanghai, and I decided to spend the year there. But then I fell in love with the city, and I didn’t want to leave. So I had to stay there for school.
But the only major they offered at the University in English was a business degree, so I doubled with business and Chinese.
BSC: Well business worked out well in the end. Are you still fluent?
TV: I used to be good, highly conversational. I stayed in music, moved to London, did a masters of business in music, and continued working full time in that industry until after the pandemic, which I used to launch Hai. I didn’t really like the male-domianted, very commercial music business in London that was all about making money versus in Shanghai it felt like we were doing something good.
BSC: So what would you have majored in at LCF?
TV: Fashion design, definitely fashion design. I really started planning the brand when I was 25, drawing and writing things down, but I kept my full time job until a year and a half ago. It was like living a double life - I’d have orders in my backpack that I’d take to the post office on my break, fulfilling everything myself, and no one had any idea that I was meeting with Browns and Selfridges on my lunch break.
BSC: Isn’t that the best? Living this double life and no one has any idea that you’re basically two different people.
TV: Yeah - it was living a double life. But at that time I was still feeling very insecure about Hai because I don’t have a proper fashion background and I didn’t always know what I was doing. Then Covid hit and work slowed down for me, which gave me more time to spend working on Hai.
BSC: Covid really screwed some people, but at the same time, some people really lucked out.
TV: Yeah and I lucked out big time, it was nice to have the time to focus on the brand. During the pandemic the brand really picked up in China and Korea so I was able to quit my job in Spring of ‘21.
I went back to my parents’ in Shanghai, created two bags that I then brought back to London and started working on. But all revenue had to stay in the company in order for it to grow.
Because what I initially wanted with the idea of Hai was to start as ready-to-wear, but I realized that wasn’t feasible - launching a full collection and working a minimum wage job in the music industry. So we started with bags.
BSC: It’s better to do fewer things well than many things poorly.
TV: My friend Asel Tambay ho is a super talented graphic designer, does a lot of branding for Hai..
BSC: Did she do the logo? I love the logo. It’s so simple.
TV: She did, she does so much of our branding. She’s an art director at the Zak Group in London that handles clients like Prada, Paco Rabanne, Rimowa. She’s incredible. So she helped with ID-ing us.
Then one day I was at a flea market and I saw a silk bag that brought back all these memories of the things my dad would bring back from his trips to Asia and I said, ‘Okay, we’re changing strategies. We’re going to start with bags.’ We mocked up a design for what that would look like, and then found a manufacturer to make the bags that we still actually work with.
I really had to convince the manufacturer to work with me! Because obviously they wanted to know what we were going to do for them, and I said, just trust me. Now they’re so thankful because they’ve had to hire more people just to work on Hai - it’s amazing.
BSC: It’s great when you help other people that took a chance on you. Where are your factories?
TV: This one is in the south of China, and then we get the silk from Suzhou near Shanghai. A twenty minute train ride away. This is all pre-Covid, 2017 and 2018. Then the difficult thing that was happening during Covid was being unable to travel and source materials and find factories, so we started working with a local studio in East London, who are amazing.
Now of course we kind of manufacture all over the world - Romania, France, China, and India now as well.
BSC: India - for textiles and such?
TV: Yes, Our silk is sourced in China but the duppion silk is hand spun in India, and then we often also source deadstock silks from all over the world.
These guys come to London all the time; beautiful embroidery and silks that we’re going to be using for the next collection.
BSC: You’re wearing it right now it seems - aren’t you cold? Or didn’t you say it has both natural cooling and heating ‘mechanisms’?
TV: Yes, it’s a natural fiber so it does both.
BSC: That’s one, very, not-so-hot thing to come out of the pandemic; everyone living in their pajamas and gym clothes.
TV: I don’t own one pair of sweatpants. Exactly zero.
I don’t own one pair of sweatpants. Exactly zero.
BSC: I was recently talking to Paris Starn at a shoot for T Magazine, who although she’s known for her food Instagram and for being a chef, attempted to launch a ready-to-wear line called Paris99 just before the pandemic came crashing down on the world of fashion. And her launch in February of 2019 had great press, but ultimately she had no choice but to shut the clothing line down because as she said, the dresses were not comfortable, and were for wearing when you wanted to be seen - which people neither wanted to be seen or be uncomfortable at any point in the following two years.
TV: I mean I made a pair of pants with a stretch waistband - but they’re still silk. I’ve done them in white and black and it’s pretty much all I wear. They have quite a drop crotch so you can wear them low or high waisted. These look great on everyone and we even have a similar pair with a zipper on the side that my mom and grandmother wear all the time.
BSC: Is that important to you as a brand to make clothes that someone of any age feels comfortable in?
TV: It’s great that someone at any age can wear them comfortably. They’re playful, yes, but they’re very classic and made from good fabrics, good quality materials.
BSC: Because I was scrolling through your ‘Hai Society’ girls on your website and it made me think more about who your market is?
TV: I would say twenties to forties.
BSC: It’s very day-to-night, versatile.
TV: It’s versatile, and that’s what I love so much about being at the shop (New York pop-up). Everyone styles it differently, and it’s so inspiring. And everyone coming in has been really great trying things on and saying how they’d wear it - I’m always taking mental notes. It allows me to see our customers while having a brand that’s mainly online.
BSC: You’re seeing your customer base outside of Korea. Which is far.
TV: So far!
BSC: I guess that’s what Instagram is for - mediating that space between being just an online shopper and a customer with individual tastes and personality.
TV: But it’s still not the same. Instagram is still such a small part of it all.
BSC: Have you thought about your next pop-up?
TV: We’re going to do one in London next, a little longer than this one - maybe two to four months?
BSC: Is that something you would like to do soon?
TV: In the spring, maybe March to June. In Shoreditch, they have a street that’s kind of the equivalent of Elizabeth St. You get tourists and locals.
BSC: And college kids with Guildhall and City College.
TV: Because I think being in (London) Soho is quite different from here, but we are an East London based brand, so I like the idea of keeping the pop-up in East London.
At one point I would love to open a store in Shanghai as well.
BSC: Because it’s so intrinsic to your brand, which by the way, reminds me of this book by Dominique Loreau called L’Art de la Simplicité, that describes her cross cultural journey from France to Japan and discovering the ability to declutter her life physically and mentally along the way.
TV: Wait, I need to write this down. Okay. I must read this. I’m quite a simple person, and you can see it in the clothes as well, how they’re classic. But obviously being around new people and traveling inspires me.
BSC: So you like New York?
TV: I find it a much easier city than London. I’ve been here for three weeks now and every day I like it more and more. Getting around.
BSC: Yes, the NYC MTA is something.
TV: People are much nicer, friendlier, and they’re just more welcoming. In London it’s hard to find friends, but here everyone is just inviting me to dinner!
BSC: These Americans and their post-Covid sensibilities, starved for human interaction, not leaving our houses.
TV: But I miss cooking every meal at home, no (social) pressure at all, none. Now I don’t even have time to cook one meal per week. But in a few years I’m sure we’ll all look back at this quite fondly.
BSC: You’re in your ‘starving artist’ era - not because you’re not doing well, but because you’re just out of time to feed yourself!
TV: My next mission for the year: to relax more. Because Hai has grown quite quickly, just one year ago we were hiring our first employee and now we’re seven and global. And I still oversee everything, all the processes. I need to learn that I don’t need to be there for everything. Our team includes, PR, marketing, do-it-alls, graphic designers, and part-time sales. I’m doing all the wholesale stuff myself and I’ve never done anything like this before!
Super talented stylist-turned-photographer Thistle Browne and stylist Heathermary Jackson — both in New Zealand during COVID-19 lockdowns — traveled to Rangitoto Island, a dormant volcano off the coast of Central Auckland, to shoot the new campaign for New Zealand jewelry designer Jasmin Sparrow. The shoot showcases Sparrow’s timeless gold and silver jewelry, and a beautiful collection of hand-beaded bras and skull caps designed with Glen Prentice. Models wore mainly vintage from Search and Destroy and Brownstone Cowboys’ collection, combined with some local, sustainable brands and New Zealand gumboots (rainboots).
Photography:Thistle Brown Styling:Heathermary Jackson Designers: Jasmin Sparrow and Glen Prentice Models: Charlotte Moffatt, Nina Katungi, Obadiah Russon
Tessa Vermeulen gets excited about Hai, and even more so about her New York City pop-up, like a little girl going to the store in mom’s heels and pearls. Consequently, her ready-to-wear collection allows grown women to again feel the giddiness only aroused by mom’s closet, but while remaining chic, oh so chic, and always feeling the softness of silk against skin.
With Hai there’s none of this sweatpants business. Regardless if you choose to lounge around in a silk tank and stretch-waistband pants, it’s still not loungewear. You could just as easily ‘lounge’ in the lobby of the Ritz as your own living room.
Since fully launching Hai last year, Tessa’s life has become ‘bus, club, another club, another club, another club, plane, next place, no sleep.’ Except it’s the Hai remix, which sounds more like, ‘dinner party, photoshoot, another dinner party, another shoot, next pop-up, no sleep, still no sleep.’
But such is the glamorous illusion of fashion, explained here amongst the Au Boulot-clad workers at Cafe Gitane.
TV: I worked in music from when I was 18 - 29
BSC: In what capacity?
TV: Always more on the producing side. It started when I was a teenager in Shanghai working for a promoter that opened an underground nightclub. I DJ’d, there were a lot of fashion events, but this is my past life.
BSC: So you can spin, right? That’s what I’m hearing?
TV: I can, I still can, but the last time I did was probably eight years ago.
BSC: It would be incredibly cool if you did a pop-up and you DJ’d the event.
TV: No, no, no - not gonna happen! Those days have passed, but it was a great learning experience during those days in Shanghai from around 2009-2014 when the music scene was changing and we were bringing in a lot of international artists.
BSC: Did you bring your own cultural heritage to the table in music in Shanghai?
TV: No, not necessarily mine, but mainly electronic music from all over the world. We got the guitarist from Jefferson Airplane even. I had the best time with them. Because I was this nineteen year old girl showing these guys around my Shanghai for four days, and they were playing an intimate venue with only a hundred people. And still the tour manager sent me personal correspondence for years updating me on their tour schedule. You just meet so many people all over the world.
BSC: I’m sure it’s incredibly cool and a little humbling to look back on what you were doing at nineteen, and looking today at the young generation - my generation - knowing that the majority of them can’t begin to compare with the stories you were telling from your own life a decade ago. Most of them don’t do jack.
TV: But no, it was amazing. And I was going to university at the same time which was not that interesting. I went to (primary) school in Holland and then wanted to go to London College of Fashion, but I didn’t even apply because I wanted to take a gap year. Around that time my parents moved to Shanghai, and I decided to spend the year there. But then I fell in love with the city, and I didn’t want to leave. So I had to stay there for school.
But the only major they offered at the University in English was a business degree, so I doubled with business and Chinese.
BSC: Well business worked out well in the end. Are you still fluent?
TV: I used to be good, highly conversational. I stayed in music, moved to London, did a masters of business in music, and continued working full time in that industry until after the pandemic, which I used to launch Hai. I didn’t really like the male-domianted, very commercial music business in London that was all about making money versus in Shanghai it felt like we were doing something good.
BSC: So what would you have majored in at LCF?
TV: Fashion design, definitely fashion design. I really started planning the brand when I was 25, drawing and writing things down, but I kept my full time job until a year and a half ago. It was like living a double life - I’d have orders in my backpack that I’d take to the post office on my break, fulfilling everything myself, and no one had any idea that I was meeting with Browns and Selfridges on my lunch break.
BSC: Isn’t that the best? Living this double life and no one has any idea that you’re basically two different people.
TV: Yeah - it was living a double life. But at that time I was still feeling very insecure about Hai because I don’t have a proper fashion background and I didn’t always know what I was doing. Then Covid hit and work slowed down for me, which gave me more time to spend working on Hai.
But at that time I was still feeling very insecure about Hai because I don’t have a proper fashion background and I didn’t always know what I was doing. Then Covid hit and my company fired so many people, but kept me. It was great! Because I had like one meeting a week, and was still getting income to pay for the flat I had just bought with my boyfriend, and I could spend all of my time on Hai.
BSC: Covid really screwed some people, but at the same time, some people really lucked out.
TV: Yeah and I lucked out big time, it was nice to have the time to focus on the brand. During the pandemic the brand really picked up in China and Korea so I was able to quit my job in Spring of ‘21.
I went back to my parents’ in Shanghai, created two bags that I then brought back to London and started working on. But all revenue had to stay in the company in order for it to grow.
Because what I initially wanted with the idea of Hai was to start as ready-to-wear, but I realized that wasn’t feasible - launching a full collection and working a minimum wage job in the music industry. So we started with bags.
BSC: It’s better to do fewer things well than many things poorly.
TV: My friend Asel Tambay ho is a super talented graphic designer, does a lot of branding for Hai..
BSC: Did she do the logo? I love the logo. It’s so simple.
TV: She did, she does so much of our branding. She’s an art director at the Zak Group in London that handles clients like Prada, Paco Rabanne, Rimowa. She’s incredible. So she helped with ID-ing us.
Then one day I was at a flea market and I saw a silk bag that brought back all these memories of the things my dad would bring back from his trips to Asia and I said, ‘Okay, we’re changing strategies. We’re going to start with bags.’ We mocked up a design for what that would look like, and then found a manufacturer to make the bags that we still actually work with.
I really had to convince the manufacturer to work with me! Because obviously they wanted to know what we were going to do for them, and I said, just trust me. Now they’re so thankful because they’ve had to hire more people just to work on Hai - it’s amazing.
BSC: It’s great when you help other people that took a chance on you. Where are your factories?
TV: This one is in the south of China, and then we get the silk from Suzhou near Shanghai. A twenty minute train ride away. This is all pre-Covid, 2017 and 2018. Then the difficult thing that was happening during Covid was being unable to travel and source materials and find factories, so we started working with a local studio in East London, who are amazing.
Now of course we kind of manufacture all over the world - Romania, France, China, and India now as well.
BSC: India - for textiles and such?
TV: Yes, Our silk is sourced in China but the duppion silk is hand spun in India, and then we often also source deadstock silks from all over the world.
These guys come to London all the time; beautiful embroidery and silks that we’re going to be using for the next collection.
BSC: You’re wearing it right now it seems - aren’t you cold? Or didn’t you say it has both natural cooling and heating ‘mechanisms’?
TV: Yes, it’s a natural fiber so it does both.
BSC: That’s one, very, not-so-hot thing to come out of the pandemic; everyone living in their pajamas and gym clothes.
TV: I don’t own one pair of sweatpants. Exactly zero.
I don’t own one pair of sweatpants. Exactly zero.
BSC: I was recently talking to Paris Starn at a shoot for T Magazine, who although she’s known for her food Instagram and for being a chef, attempted to launch a ready-to-wear line called Paris99 just before the pandemic came crashing down on the world of fashion. And her launch in February of 2019 had great press, but ultimately she had no choice but to shut the clothing line down because as she said, the dresses were not comfortable, and were for wearing when you wanted to be seen - which people neither wanted to be seen or be uncomfortable at any point in the following two years.
TV: I mean I made a pair of pants with a stretch waistband - but they’re still silk. I’ve done them in white and black and it’s pretty much all I wear. They have quite a drop crotch so you can wear them low or high waisted. These look great on everyone and we even have a similar pair with a zipper on the side that my mom and grandmother wear all the time.
BSC: Is that important to you as a brand to make clothes that someone of any age feels comfortable in?
TV: It’s great that someone at any age can wear them comfortably. They’re playful, yes, but they’re very classic and made from good fabrics, good quality materials.
BSC: Because I was scrolling through your ‘Hai Society’ girls on your website and it made me think more about who your market is?
TV: I would say twenties to forties.
BSC: It’s very day-to-night, versatile.
TV: It’s versatile, and that’s what I love so much about being at the shop (New York pop-up). Everyone styles it differently, and it’s so inspiring. And everyone coming in has been really great trying things on and saying how they’d wear it - I’m always taking mental notes. It allows me to see our customers while having a brand that’s mainly online.
BSC: You’re seeing your customer base outside of Korea. Which is far.
TV: So far!
BSC: I guess that’s what Instagram is for - mediating that space between being just an online shopper and a customer with individual tastes and personality.
TV: But it’s still not the same. Instagram is still such a small part of it all.
BSC: Have you thought about your next pop-up?
TV: We’re going to do one in London next, a little longer than this one - maybe two to four months?
BSC: Is that something you would like to do soon?
TV: In the spring, maybe March to June. In Shoreditch, they have a street that’s kind of the equivalent of Elizabeth St. You get tourists and locals.
BSC: And college kids with Guildhall and City College.
TV: Because I think being in (London) Soho is quite different from here, but we are an East London based brand, so I like the idea of keeping the pop-up in East London.
At one point I would love to open a store in Shanghai as well.
BSC: Because it’s so intrinsic to your brand, which by the way, reminds me of this book by Dominique Loreau called L’Art de la Simplicité, that describes her cross cultural journey from France to Japan and discovering the ability to declutter her life physically and mentally along the way.
TV: Wait, I need to write this down. Okay. I must read this. I’m quite a simple person, and you can see it in the clothes as well, how they’re classic. But obviously being around new people and traveling inspires me.
BSC: So you like New York?
TV: I find it a much easier city than London. I’ve been here for three weeks now and every day I like it more and more. Getting around.
BSC: Yes, the NYC MTA is something.
TV: People are much nicer, friendlier, and they’re just more welcoming. In London it’s hard to find friends, but here everyone is just inviting me to dinner!
BSC: These Americans and their post-Covid sensibilities, starved for human interaction, not leaving our houses.
TV: But I miss cooking every meal at home, no (social) pressure at all, none. Now I don’t even have time to cook one meal per week. But in a few years I’m sure we’ll all look back at this quite fondly.
BSC: You’re in your ‘starving artist’ era - not because you’re not doing well, but because you’re just out of time to feed yourself!
TV: My next mission for the year: to relax more. Because Hai has grown quite quickly, just one year ago we were hiring our first employee and now we’re seven and global. And I still oversee everything, all the processes. I need to learn that I don’t need to be there for everything. Our team includes, PR, marketing, do-it-alls, graphic designers, and part-time sales. I’m doing all the wholesale stuff myself and I’ve never done anything like this before!
My next mission for the year: to relax more. Because Hai has grown quite quickly, just one year ago we were hiring our first employee and now we’re seven and global. And I still oversee everything, all the processes. I need to learn that I don’t need to be there for everything. Our team includes, PR, marketing, do-it-alls, graphic designers, and part-time sales. I’m doing all the wholesale stuff myself and I’ve never done anything like this before!
BSC: It’s like they say there’s no better way to learn the language than to move to that country.
TV: Exactly, and I’ve learned so much. But it’s gotten to an overwhelming point. It’s a lot, but it’s good, and no complaining - no complaining. I’m just so very precise and organized.
BSC: And at the rate you’re growing - you can’t put that kind of pressure on one person, which is yourself.
TV: Exactly, that’s why this next year I’m going to take it a little easier.
Tessa Vermeulen gets excited about Hai, and even more so about her New York City pop-up, like a little girl going to the store in mom’s heels and pearls. Consequently, her ready-to-wear collection allows grown women to again feel the giddiness only aroused by mom’s closet, but while remaining chic, oh so chic, and always feeling the softness of silk against skin.
With Hai there’s none of this sweatpants business. Regardless if you choose to lounge around in a silk tank and stretch-waistband pants, it’s still not loungewear. You could just as easily ‘lounge’ in the lobby of the Ritz as your own living room.
Since fully launching Hai last year, Tessa’s life has become ‘bus, club, another club, another club, another club, plane, next place, no sleep.’ Except it’s the Hai remix, which sounds more like, ‘dinner party, photoshoot, another dinner party, another shoot, next pop-up, no sleep, still no sleep.’
But such is the glamorous illusion of fashion, explained here amongst the Au Boulot-clad workers at Cafe Gitane.
TV: I worked in music from when I was 18 - 29
BSC: In what capacity?
TV: Always more on the producing side. It started when I was a teenager in Shanghai working for a promoter that opened an underground nightclub. I DJ’d, there were a lot of fashion events, but this is my past life.
BSC: So you can spin, right? That’s what I’m hearing?
TV: I can, I still can, but the last time I did was probably eight years ago.
BSC: It would be incredibly cool if you did a pop-up and you DJ’d the event.
TV: No, no, no - not gonna happen! Those days have passed, but it was a great learning experience during those days in Shanghai from around 2009-2014 when the music scene was changing and we were bringing in a lot of international artists.
BSC: Did you bring your own cultural heritage to the table in music in Shanghai?
TV: No, not necessarily mine, but mainly electronic music from all over the world. We got the guitarist from Jefferson Airplane even. I had the best time with them. Because I was this nineteen year old girl showing these guys around my Shanghai for four days, and they were playing an intimate venue with only a hundred people. And still the tour manager sent me personal correspondence for years updating me on their tour schedule. You just meet so many people all over the world.
BSC: I’m sure it’s incredibly cool and a little humbling to look back on what you were doing at nineteen, and looking today at the young generation - my generation - knowing that the majority of them can’t begin to compare with the stories you were telling from your own life a decade ago. Most of them don’t do jack.
TV: But no, it was amazing. And I was going to university at the same time which was not that interesting. I went to (primary) school in Holland and then wanted to go to London College of Fashion, but I didn’t even apply because I wanted to take a gap year. Around that time my parents moved to Shanghai, and I decided to spend the year there. But then I fell in love with the city, and I didn’t want to leave. So I had to stay there for school.
But the only major they offered at the University in English was a business degree, so I doubled with business and Chinese.
BSC: Well business worked out well in the end. Are you still fluent?
TV: I used to be good, highly conversational. I stayed in music, moved to London, did a masters of business in music, and continued working full time in that industry until after the pandemic, which I used to launch Hai. I didn’t really like the male-domianted, very commercial music business in London that was all about making money versus in Shanghai it felt like we were doing something good.
BSC: So what would you have majored in at LCF?
TV: Fashion design, definitely fashion design. I really started planning the brand when I was 25, drawing and writing things down, but I kept my full time job until a year and a half ago. It was like living a double life - I’d have orders in my backpack that I’d take to the post office on my break, fulfilling everything myself, and no one had any idea that I was meeting with Browns and Selfridges on my lunch break.
BSC: Isn’t that the best? Living this double life and no one has any idea that you’re basically two different people.
TV: Yeah - it was living a double life. But at that time I was still feeling very insecure about Hai because I don’t have a proper fashion background and I didn’t always know what I was doing. Then Covid hit and work slowed down for me, which gave me more time to spend working on Hai.
BSC: Covid really screwed some people, but at the same time, some people really lucked out.
TV: Yeah and I lucked out big time, it was nice to have the time to focus on the brand. During the pandemic the brand really picked up in China and Korea so I was able to quit my job in Spring of ‘21.
I went back to my parents’ in Shanghai, created two bags that I then brought back to London and started working on. But all revenue had to stay in the company in order for it to grow.
Because what I initially wanted with the idea of Hai was to start as ready-to-wear, but I realized that wasn’t feasible - launching a full collection and working a minimum wage job in the music industry. So we started with bags.
BSC: It’s better to do fewer things well than many things poorly.
TV: My friend Asel Tambay ho is a super talented graphic designer, does a lot of branding for Hai..
BSC: Did she do the logo? I love the logo. It’s so simple.
TV: She did, she does so much of our branding. She’s an art director at the Zak Group in London that handles clients like Prada, Paco Rabanne, Rimowa. She’s incredible. So she helped with ID-ing us.
Then one day I was at a flea market and I saw a silk bag that brought back all these memories of the things my dad would bring back from his trips to Asia and I said, ‘Okay, we’re changing strategies. We’re going to start with bags.’ We mocked up a design for what that would look like, and then found a manufacturer to make the bags that we still actually work with.
I really had to convince the manufacturer to work with me! Because obviously they wanted to know what we were going to do for them, and I said, just trust me. Now they’re so thankful because they’ve had to hire more people just to work on Hai - it’s amazing.
BSC: It’s great when you help other people that took a chance on you. Where are your factories?
TV: This one is in the south of China, and then we get the silk from Suzhou near Shanghai. A twenty minute train ride away. This is all pre-Covid, 2017 and 2018. Then the difficult thing that was happening during Covid was being unable to travel and source materials and find factories, so we started working with a local studio in East London, who are amazing.
Now of course we kind of manufacture all over the world - Romania, France, China, and India now as well.
BSC: India - for textiles and such?
TV: Yes, Our silk is sourced in China but the duppion silk is hand spun in India, and then we often also source deadstock silks from all over the world.
These guys come to London all the time; beautiful embroidery and silks that we’re going to be using for the next collection.
BSC: You’re wearing it right now it seems - aren’t you cold? Or didn’t you say it has both natural cooling and heating ‘mechanisms’?
TV: Yes, it’s a natural fiber so it does both.
BSC: That’s one, very, not-so-hot thing to come out of the pandemic; everyone living in their pajamas and gym clothes.
TV: I don’t own one pair of sweatpants. Exactly zero.
I don’t own one pair of sweatpants. Exactly zero.
BSC: I was recently talking to Paris Starn at a shoot for T Magazine, who although she’s known for her food Instagram and for being a chef, attempted to launch a ready-to-wear line called Paris99 just before the pandemic came crashing down on the world of fashion. And her launch in February of 2019 had great press, but ultimately she had no choice but to shut the clothing line down because as she said, the dresses were not comfortable, and were for wearing when you wanted to be seen - which people neither wanted to be seen or be uncomfortable at any point in the following two years.
TV: I mean I made a pair of pants with a stretch waistband - but they’re still silk. I’ve done them in white and black and it’s pretty much all I wear. They have quite a drop crotch so you can wear them low or high waisted. These look great on everyone and we even have a similar pair with a zipper on the side that my mom and grandmother wear all the time.
BSC: Is that important to you as a brand to make clothes that someone of any age feels comfortable in?
TV: It’s great that someone at any age can wear them comfortably. They’re playful, yes, but they’re very classic and made from good fabrics, good quality materials.
BSC: Because I was scrolling through your ‘Hai Society’ girls on your website and it made me think more about who your market is?
TV: I would say twenties to forties.
BSC: It’s very day-to-night, versatile.
TV: It’s versatile, and that’s what I love so much about being at the shop (New York pop-up). Everyone styles it differently, and it’s so inspiring. And everyone coming in has been really great trying things on and saying how they’d wear it - I’m always taking mental notes. It allows me to see our customers while having a brand that’s mainly online.
BSC: You’re seeing your customer base outside of Korea. Which is far.
TV: So far!
BSC: I guess that’s what Instagram is for - mediating that space between being just an online shopper and a customer with individual tastes and personality.
TV: But it’s still not the same. Instagram is still such a small part of it all.
BSC: Have you thought about your next pop-up?
TV: We’re going to do one in London next, a little longer than this one - maybe two to four months?
BSC: Is that something you would like to do soon?
TV: In the spring, maybe March to June. In Shoreditch, they have a street that’s kind of the equivalent of Elizabeth St. You get tourists and locals.
BSC: And college kids with Guildhall and City College.
TV: Because I think being in (London) Soho is quite different from here, but we are an East London based brand, so I like the idea of keeping the pop-up in East London.
At one point I would love to open a store in Shanghai as well.
BSC: Because it’s so intrinsic to your brand, which by the way, reminds me of this book by Dominique Loreau called L’Art de la Simplicité, that describes her cross cultural journey from France to Japan and discovering the ability to declutter her life physically and mentally along the way.
TV: Wait, I need to write this down. Okay. I must read this. I’m quite a simple person, and you can see it in the clothes as well, how they’re classic. But obviously being around new people and traveling inspires me.
BSC: So you like New York?
TV: I find it a much easier city than London. I’ve been here for three weeks now and every day I like it more and more. Getting around.
BSC: Yes, the NYC MTA is something.
TV: People are much nicer, friendlier, and they’re just more welcoming. In London it’s hard to find friends, but here everyone is just inviting me to dinner!
BSC: These Americans and their post-Covid sensibilities, starved for human interaction, not leaving our houses.
TV: But I miss cooking every meal at home, no (social) pressure at all, none. Now I don’t even have time to cook one meal per week. But in a few years I’m sure we’ll all look back at this quite fondly.
BSC: You’re in your ‘starving artist’ era - not because you’re not doing well, but because you’re just out of time to feed yourself!
TV: My next mission for the year: to relax more. Because Hai has grown quite quickly, just one year ago we were hiring our first employee and now we’re seven and global. And I still oversee everything, all the processes. I need to learn that I don’t need to be there for everything. Our team includes, PR, marketing, do-it-alls, graphic designers, and part-time sales. I’m doing all the wholesale stuff myself and I’ve never done anything like this before!
BSC: It’s like they say there’s no better way to learn the language than to move to that country.
TV: Exactly, and I’ve learned so much. But it’s gotten to an overwhelming point. It’s a lot, but it’s good, and no complaining - no complaining. I’m just so very precise and organized.
BSC: And at the rate you’re growing - you can’t put that kind of pressure on one person, which is yourself.
TV: Exactly, that’s why this next year I’m going to take it a little easier.
Tessa Vermeulen gets excited about Hai, and even more so about her New York City pop-up, like a little girl going to the store in mom’s heels and pearls. Consequently, her ready-to-wear collection allows grown women to again feel the giddiness only aroused by mom’s closet, but while remaining chic, oh so chic, and always feeling the softness of silk against skin.
With Hai there’s none of this sweatpants business. Regardless if you choose to lounge around in a silk tank and stretch-waistband pants, it’s still not loungewear. You could just as easily ‘lounge’ in the lobby of the Ritz as your own living room.
Since fully launching Hai last year, Tessa’s life has become ‘bus, club, another club, another club, another club, plane, next place, no sleep.’ Except it’s the Hai remix, which sounds more like, ‘dinner party, photoshoot, another dinner party, another shoot, next pop-up, no sleep, still no sleep.’
But such is the glamorous illusion of fashion, explained here amongst the Au Boulot-clad workers at Cafe Gitane.
TV: I worked in music from when I was 18 - 29
BSC: In what capacity?
TV: Always more on the producing side. It started when I was a teenager in Shanghai working for a promoter that opened an underground nightclub. I DJ’d, there were a lot of fashion events, but this is my past life.
BSC: So you can spin, right? That’s what I’m hearing?
TV: I can, I still can, but the last time I did was probably eight years ago.
BSC: It would be incredibly cool if you did a pop-up and you DJ’d the event.
TV: No, no, no - not gonna happen! Those days have passed, but it was a great learning experience during those days in Shanghai from around 2009-2014 when the music scene was changing and we were bringing in a lot of international artists.
BSC: Did you bring your own cultural heritage to the table in music in Shanghai?
TV: No, not necessarily mine, but mainly electronic music from all over the world. We got the guitarist from Jefferson Airplane even. I had the best time with them. Because I was this nineteen year old girl showing these guys around my Shanghai for four days, and they were playing an intimate venue with only a hundred people. And still the tour manager sent me personal correspondence for years updating me on their tour schedule. You just meet so many people all over the world.
BSC: I’m sure it’s incredibly cool and a little humbling to look back on what you were doing at nineteen, and looking today at the young generation - my generation - knowing that the majority of them can’t begin to compare with the stories you were telling from your own life a decade ago. Most of them don’t do jack.
TV: But no, it was amazing. And I was going to university at the same time which was not that interesting. I went to (primary) school in Holland and then wanted to go to London College of Fashion, but I didn’t even apply because I wanted to take a gap year. Around that time my parents moved to Shanghai, and I decided to spend the year there. But then I fell in love with the city, and I didn’t want to leave. So I had to stay there for school.
But the only major they offered at the University in English was a business degree, so I doubled with business and Chinese.
BSC: Well business worked out well in the end. Are you still fluent?
TV: I used to be good, highly conversational. I stayed in music, moved to London, did a masters of business in music, and continued working full time in that industry until after the pandemic, which I used to launch Hai. I didn’t really like the male-domianted, very commercial music business in London that was all about making money versus in Shanghai it felt like we were doing something good.
BSC: So what would you have majored in at LCF?
TV: Fashion design, definitely fashion design. I really started planning the brand when I was 25, drawing and writing things down, but I kept my full time job until a year and a half ago. It was like living a double life - I’d have orders in my backpack that I’d take to the post office on my break, fulfilling everything myself, and no one had any idea that I was meeting with Browns and Selfridges on my lunch break.
BSC: Isn’t that the best? Living this double life and no one has any idea that you’re basically two different people.
TV: Yeah - it was living a double life. But at that time I was still feeling very insecure about Hai because I don’t have a proper fashion background and I didn’t always know what I was doing. Then Covid hit and work slowed down for me, which gave me more time to spend working on Hai.
BSC: Covid really screwed some people, but at the same time, some people really lucked out.
TV: Yeah and I lucked out big time, it was nice to have the time to focus on the brand. During the pandemic the brand really picked up in China and Korea so I was able to quit my job in Spring of ‘21.
I went back to my parents’ in Shanghai, created two bags that I then brought back to London and started working on. But all revenue had to stay in the company in order for it to grow.
Because what I initially wanted with the idea of Hai was to start as ready-to-wear, but I realized that wasn’t feasible - launching a full collection and working a minimum wage job in the music industry. So we started with bags.
BSC: It’s better to do fewer things well than many things poorly.
TV: My friend Asel Tambay ho is a super talented graphic designer, does a lot of branding for Hai..
BSC: Did she do the logo? I love the logo. It’s so simple.
TV: She did, she does so much of our branding. She’s an art director at the Zak Group in London that handles clients like Prada, Paco Rabanne, Rimowa. She’s incredible. So she helped with ID-ing us.
Then one day I was at a flea market and I saw a silk bag that brought back all these memories of the things my dad would bring back from his trips to Asia and I said, ‘Okay, we’re changing strategies. We’re going to start with bags.’ We mocked up a design for what that would look like, and then found a manufacturer to make the bags that we still actually work with.
I really had to convince the manufacturer to work with me! Because obviously they wanted to know what we were going to do for them, and I said, just trust me. Now they’re so thankful because they’ve had to hire more people just to work on Hai - it’s amazing.
BSC: It’s great when you help other people that took a chance on you. Where are your factories?
TV: This one is in the south of China, and then we get the silk from Suzhou near Shanghai. A twenty minute train ride away. This is all pre-Covid, 2017 and 2018. Then the difficult thing that was happening during Covid was being unable to travel and source materials and find factories, so we started working with a local studio in East London, who are amazing.
Now of course we kind of manufacture all over the world - Romania, France, China, and India now as well.
BSC: India - for textiles and such?
TV: Yes, Our silk is sourced in China but the duppion silk is hand spun in India, and then we often also source deadstock silks from all over the world.
These guys come to London all the time; beautiful embroidery and silks that we’re going to be using for the next collection.
BSC: You’re wearing it right now it seems - aren’t you cold? Or didn’t you say it has both natural cooling and heating ‘mechanisms’?
TV: Yes, it’s a natural fiber so it does both.
BSC: That’s one, very, not-so-hot thing to come out of the pandemic; everyone living in their pajamas and gym clothes.
TV: I don’t own one pair of sweatpants. Exactly zero.
I don’t own one pair of sweatpants. Exactly zero.
BSC: I was recently talking to Paris Starn at a shoot for T Magazine, who although she’s known for her food Instagram and for being a chef, attempted to launch a ready-to-wear line called Paris99 just before the pandemic came crashing down on the world of fashion. And her launch in February of 2019 had great press, but ultimately she had no choice but to shut the clothing line down because as she said, the dresses were not comfortable, and were for wearing when you wanted to be seen - which people neither wanted to be seen or be uncomfortable at any point in the following two years.
TV: I mean I made a pair of pants with a stretch waistband - but they’re still silk. I’ve done them in white and black and it’s pretty much all I wear. They have quite a drop crotch so you can wear them low or high waisted. These look great on everyone and we even have a similar pair with a zipper on the side that my mom and grandmother wear all the time.
BSC: Is that important to you as a brand to make clothes that someone of any age feels comfortable in?
TV: It’s great that someone at any age can wear them comfortably. They’re playful, yes, but they’re very classic and made from good fabrics, good quality materials.
BSC: Because I was scrolling through your ‘Hai Society’ girls on your website and it made me think more about who your market is?
TV: I would say twenties to forties.
BSC: It’s very day-to-night, versatile.
TV: It’s versatile, and that’s what I love so much about being at the shop (New York pop-up). Everyone styles it differently, and it’s so inspiring. And everyone coming in has been really great trying things on and saying how they’d wear it - I’m always taking mental notes. It allows me to see our customers while having a brand that’s mainly online.
BSC: You’re seeing your customer base outside of Korea. Which is far.
TV: So far!
BSC: I guess that’s what Instagram is for - mediating that space between being just an online shopper and a customer with individual tastes and personality.
TV: But it’s still not the same. Instagram is still such a small part of it all.
BSC: Have you thought about your next pop-up?
TV: We’re going to do one in London next, a little longer than this one - maybe two to four months?
BSC: Is that something you would like to do soon?
TV: In the spring, maybe March to June. In Shoreditch, they have a street that’s kind of the equivalent of Elizabeth St. You get tourists and locals.
BSC: And college kids with Guildhall and City College.
TV: Because I think being in (London) Soho is quite different from here, but we are an East London based brand, so I like the idea of keeping the pop-up in East London.
At one point I would love to open a store in Shanghai as well.
BSC: Because it’s so intrinsic to your brand, which by the way, reminds me of this book by Dominique Loreau called L’Art de la Simplicité, that describes her cross cultural journey from France to Japan and discovering the ability to declutter her life physically and mentally along the way.
TV: Wait, I need to write this down. Okay. I must read this. I’m quite a simple person, and you can see it in the clothes as well, how they’re classic. But obviously being around new people and traveling inspires me.
BSC: So you like New York?
TV: I find it a much easier city than London. I’ve been here for three weeks now and every day I like it more and more. Getting around.
BSC: Yes, the NYC MTA is something.
TV: People are much nicer, friendlier, and they’re just more welcoming. In London it’s hard to find friends, but here everyone is just inviting me to dinner!
BSC: These Americans and their post-Covid sensibilities, starved for human interaction, not leaving our houses.
TV: But I miss cooking every meal at home, no (social) pressure at all, none. Now I don’t even have time to cook one meal per week. But in a few years I’m sure we’ll all look back at this quite fondly.
BSC: You’re in your ‘starving artist’ era - not because you’re not doing well, but because you’re just out of time to feed yourself!
TV: My next mission for the year: to relax more. Because Hai has grown quite quickly, just one year ago we were hiring our first employee and now we’re seven and global. And I still oversee everything, all the processes. I need to learn that I don’t need to be there for everything. Our team includes, PR, marketing, do-it-alls, graphic designers, and part-time sales. I’m doing all the wholesale stuff myself and I’ve never done anything like this before!
Tessa Vermeulen gets excited about Hai, and even more so about her New York City pop-up, like a little girl going to the store in mom’s heels and pearls. Consequently, her ready-to-wear collection allows grown women to again feel the giddiness only aroused by mom’s closet, but while remaining chic, oh so chic, and always feeling the softness of silk against skin.
With Hai there’s none of this sweatpants business. Regardless if you choose to lounge around in a silk tank and stretch-waistband pants, it’s still not loungewear. You could just as easily ‘lounge’ in the lobby of the Ritz as your own living room.
Since fully launching Hai last year, Tessa’s life has become ‘bus, club, another club, another club, another club, plane, next place, no sleep.’ Except it’s the Hai remix, which sounds more like, ‘dinner party, photoshoot, another dinner party, another shoot, next pop-up, no sleep, still no sleep.’
But such is the glamorous illusion of fashion, explained here amongst the Au Boulot-clad workers at Cafe Gitane.
TV: I worked in music from when I was 18 - 29
BSC: In what capacity?
TV: Always more on the producing side. It started when I was a teenager in Shanghai working for a promoter that opened an underground nightclub. I DJ’d, there were a lot of fashion events, but this is my past life.
BSC: So you can spin, right? That’s what I’m hearing?
TV: I can, I still can, but the last time I did was probably eight years ago.
BSC: It would be incredibly cool if you did a pop-up and you DJ’d the event.
TV: No, no, no - not gonna happen! Those days have passed, but it was a great learning experience during those days in Shanghai from around 2009-2014 when the music scene was changing and we were bringing in a lot of international artists.
BSC: Did you bring your own cultural heritage to the table in music in Shanghai?
TV: No, not necessarily mine, but mainly electronic music from all over the world. We got the guitarist from Jefferson Airplane even. I had the best time with them. Because I was this nineteen year old girl showing these guys around my Shanghai for four days, and they were playing an intimate venue with only a hundred people. And still the tour manager sent me personal correspondence for years updating me on their tour schedule. You just meet so many people all over the world.
BSC: I’m sure it’s incredibly cool and a little humbling to look back on what you were doing at nineteen, and looking today at the young generation - my generation - knowing that the majority of them can’t begin to compare with the stories you were telling from your own life a decade ago. Most of them don’t do jack.
TV: But no, it was amazing. And I was going to university at the same time which was not that interesting. I went to (primary) school in Holland and then wanted to go to London College of Fashion, but I didn’t even apply because I wanted to take a gap year. Around that time my parents moved to Shanghai, and I decided to spend the year there. But then I fell in love with the city, and I didn’t want to leave. So I had to stay there for school.
But the only major they offered at the University in English was a business degree, so I doubled with business and Chinese.
BSC: Well business worked out well in the end. Are you still fluent?
TV: I used to be good, highly conversational. I stayed in music, moved to London, did a masters of business in music, and continued working full time in that industry until after the pandemic, which I used to launch Hai. I didn’t really like the male-domianted, very commercial music business in London that was all about making money versus in Shanghai it felt like we were doing something good.
BSC: So what would you have majored in at LCF?
TV: Fashion design, definitely fashion design. I really started planning the brand when I was 25, drawing and writing things down, but I kept my full time job until a year and a half ago. It was like living a double life - I’d have orders in my backpack that I’d take to the post office on my break, fulfilling everything myself, and no one had any idea that I was meeting with Browns and Selfridges on my lunch break.
BSC: Isn’t that the best? Living this double life and no one has any idea that you’re basically two different people.
TV: Yeah - it was living a double life. But at that time I was still feeling very insecure about Hai because I don’t have a proper fashion background and I didn’t always know what I was doing. Then Covid hit and work slowed down for me, which gave me more time to spend working on Hai.
BSC: Covid really screwed some people, but at the same time, some people really lucked out.
TV: Yeah and I lucked out big time, it was nice to have the time to focus on the brand. During the pandemic the brand really picked up in China and Korea so I was able to quit my job in Spring of ‘21.
I went back to my parents’ in Shanghai, created two bags that I then brought back to London and started working on. But all revenue had to stay in the company in order for it to grow.
Because what I initially wanted with the idea of Hai was to start as ready-to-wear, but I realized that wasn’t feasible - launching a full collection and working a minimum wage job in the music industry. So we started with bags.
BSC: It’s better to do fewer things well than many things poorly.
TV: My friend Asel Tambay ho is a super talented graphic designer, does a lot of branding for Hai..
BSC: Did she do the logo? I love the logo. It’s so simple.
TV: She did, she does so much of our branding. She’s an art director at the Zak Group in London that handles clients like Prada, Paco Rabanne, Rimowa. She’s incredible. So she helped with ID-ing us.
Then one day I was at a flea market and I saw a silk bag that brought back all these memories of the things my dad would bring back from his trips to Asia and I said, ‘Okay, we’re changing strategies. We’re going to start with bags.’ We mocked up a design for what that would look like, and then found a manufacturer to make the bags that we still actually work with.
I really had to convince the manufacturer to work with me! Because obviously they wanted to know what we were going to do for them, and I said, just trust me. Now they’re so thankful because they’ve had to hire more people just to work on Hai - it’s amazing.
BSC: It’s great when you help other people that took a chance on you. Where are your factories?
TV: This one is in the south of China, and then we get the silk from Suzhou near Shanghai. A twenty minute train ride away. This is all pre-Covid, 2017 and 2018. Then the difficult thing that was happening during Covid was being unable to travel and source materials and find factories, so we started working with a local studio in East London, who are amazing.
Now of course we kind of manufacture all over the world - Romania, France, China, and India now as well.
BSC: India - for textiles and such?
TV: Yes, Our silk is sourced in China but the duppion silk is hand spun in India, and then we often also source deadstock silks from all over the world.
These guys come to London all the time; beautiful embroidery and silks that we’re going to be using for the next collection.
BSC: You’re wearing it right now it seems - aren’t you cold? Or didn’t you say it has both natural cooling and heating ‘mechanisms’?
TV: Yes, it’s a natural fiber so it does both.
BSC: That’s one, very, not-so-hot thing to come out of the pandemic; everyone living in their pajamas and gym clothes.
TV: I don’t own one pair of sweatpants. Exactly zero.
I don’t own one pair of sweatpants. Exactly zero.
BSC: I was recently talking to Paris Starn at a shoot for T Magazine, who although she’s known for her food Instagram and for being a chef, attempted to launch a ready-to-wear line called Paris99 just before the pandemic came crashing down on the world of fashion. And her launch in February of 2019 had great press, but ultimately she had no choice but to shut the clothing line down because as she said, the dresses were not comfortable, and were for wearing when you wanted to be seen - which people neither wanted to be seen or be uncomfortable at any point in the following two years.
TV: I mean I made a pair of pants with a stretch waistband - but they’re still silk. I’ve done them in white and black and it’s pretty much all I wear. They have quite a drop crotch so you can wear them low or high waisted. These look great on everyone and we even have a similar pair with a zipper on the side that my mom and grandmother wear all the time.
BSC: Is that important to you as a brand to make clothes that someone of any age feels comfortable in?
TV: It’s great that someone at any age can wear them comfortably. They’re playful, yes, but they’re very classic and made from good fabrics, good quality materials.
BSC: Because I was scrolling through your ‘Hai Society’ girls on your website and it made me think more about who your market is?
TV: I would say twenties to forties.
BSC: It’s very day-to-night, versatile.
TV: It’s versatile, and that’s what I love so much about being at the shop (New York pop-up). Everyone styles it differently, and it’s so inspiring. And everyone coming in has been really great trying things on and saying how they’d wear it - I’m always taking mental notes. It allows me to see our customers while having a brand that’s mainly online.
BSC: You’re seeing your customer base outside of Korea. Which is far.
TV: So far!
BSC: I guess that’s what Instagram is for - mediating that space between being just an online shopper and a customer with individual tastes and personality.
TV: But it’s still not the same. Instagram is still such a small part of it all.
BSC: Have you thought about your next pop-up?
TV: We’re going to do one in London next, a little longer than this one - maybe two to four months?
BSC: Is that something you would like to do soon?
TV: In the spring, maybe March to June. In Shoreditch, they have a street that’s kind of the equivalent of Elizabeth St. You get tourists and locals.
BSC: And college kids with Guildhall and City College.
TV: Because I think being in (London) Soho is quite different from here, but we are an East London based brand, so I like the idea of keeping the pop-up in East London.
At one point I would love to open a store in Shanghai as well.
BSC: Because it’s so intrinsic to your brand, which by the way, reminds me of this book by Dominique Loreau called L’Art de la Simplicité, that describes her cross cultural journey from France to Japan and discovering the ability to declutter her life physically and mentally along the way.
TV: Wait, I need to write this down. Okay. I must read this. I’m quite a simple person, and you can see it in the clothes as well, how they’re classic. But obviously being around new people and traveling inspires me.
BSC: So you like New York?
TV: I find it a much easier city than London. I’ve been here for three weeks now and every day I like it more and more. Getting around.
BSC: Yes, the NYC MTA is something.
TV: People are much nicer, friendlier, and they’re just more welcoming. In London it’s hard to find friends, but here everyone is just inviting me to dinner!
BSC: These Americans and their post-Covid sensibilities, starved for human interaction, not leaving our houses.
TV: But I miss cooking every meal at home, no (social) pressure at all, none. Now I don’t even have time to cook one meal per week. But in a few years I’m sure we’ll all look back at this quite fondly.
BSC: You’re in your ‘starving artist’ era - not because you’re not doing well, but because you’re just out of time to feed yourself!
TV: My next mission for the year: to relax more. Because Hai has grown quite quickly, just one year ago we were hiring our first employee and now we’re seven and global. And I still oversee everything, all the processes. I need to learn that I don’t need to be there for everything. Our team includes, PR, marketing, do-it-alls, graphic designers, and part-time sales. I’m doing all the wholesale stuff myself and I’ve never done anything like this before!
BSC: It’s like they say there’s no better way to learn the language than to move to that country.
TV: Exactly, and I’ve learned so much. But it’s gotten to an overwhelming point. It’s a lot, but it’s good, and no complaining - no complaining. I’m just so very precise and organized.
BSC: And at the rate you’re growing - you can’t put that kind of pressure on one person, which is yourself.
TV: Exactly, that’s why this next year I’m going to take it a little easier.
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Hai Society x Brownstone Cowboys
FASHION & BEAUTY
October 11, 2023
Tessa Vermeulen gets excited about Hai, and even more so about her New York City pop-up, like a little girl going to the store in mom’s heels and pearls. Consequently, her ready-to-wear collection allows grown women to again feel the giddiness only aroused by mom’s closet, but while remaining chic, oh so chic, and always feeling the softness of silk against skin.
With Hai there’s none of this sweatpants business. Regardless if you choose to lounge around in a silk tank and stretch-waistband pants, it’s still not loungewear. You could just as easily ‘lounge’ in the lobby of the Ritz as your own living room.
Since fully launching Hai last year, Tessa’s life has become ‘bus, club, another club, another club, another club, plane, next place, no sleep.’ Except it’s the Hai remix, which sounds more like, ‘dinner party, photoshoot, another dinner party, another shoot, next pop-up, no sleep, still no sleep.’
But such is the glamorous illusion of fashion, explained here amongst the Au Boulot-clad workers at Cafe Gitane.
Tessa Vermeulen gets excited about Hai, and even more so about her New York City pop-up, like a little girl going to the store in mom’s heels and pearls. Consequently, her ready-to-wear collection allows grown women to again feel the giddiness only aroused by mom’s closet, but while remaining chic, oh so chic, and always feeling the softness of silk against skin.
With Hai there’s none of this sweatpants business. Regardless if you choose to lounge around in a silk tank and stretch-waistband pants, it’s still not loungewear. You could just as easily ‘lounge’ in the lobby of the Ritz as your own living room.
Since fully launching Hai last year, Tessa’s life has become ‘bus, club, another club, another club, another club, plane, next place, no sleep.’ Except it’s the Hai remix, which sounds more like, ‘dinner party, photoshoot, another dinner party, another shoot, next pop-up, no sleep, still no sleep.’
But such is the glamorous illusion of fashion, explained here amongst the Au Boulot-clad workers at Cafe Gitane.
TV: I worked in music from when I was 18 - 29
BSC: In what capacity?
TV: Always more on the producing side. It started when I was a teenager in Shanghai working for a promoter that opened an underground nightclub. I DJ’d, there were a lot of fashion events, but this is my past life.
BSC: So you can spin, right? That’s what I’m hearing?
TV: I can, I still can, but the last time I did was probably eight years ago.
BSC: It would be incredibly cool if you did a pop-up and you DJ’d the event.
TV: No, no, no - not gonna happen! Those days have passed, but it was a great learning experience during those days in Shanghai from around 2009-2014 when the music scene was changing and we were bringing in a lot of international artists.
BSC: Did you bring your own cultural heritage to the table in music in Shanghai?
TV: No, not necessarily mine, but mainly electronic music from all over the world. We got the guitarist from Jefferson Airplane even. I had the best time with them. Because I was this nineteen year old girl showing these guys around my Shanghai for four days, and they were playing an intimate venue with only a hundred people. And still the tour manager sent me personal correspondence for years updating me on their tour schedule. You just meet so many people all over the world.
BSC: I’m sure it’s incredibly cool and a little humbling to look back on what you were doing at nineteen, and looking today at the young generation - my generation - knowing that the majority of them can’t begin to compare with the stories you were telling from your own life a decade ago. Most of them don’t do jack.
TV: But no, it was amazing. And I was going to university at the same time which was not that interesting. I went to (primary) school in Holland and then wanted to go to London College of Fashion, but I didn’t even apply because I wanted to take a gap year. Around that time my parents moved to Shanghai, and I decided to spend the year there. But then I fell in love with the city, and I didn’t want to leave. So I had to stay there for school.
But the only major they offered at the University in English was a business degree, so I doubled with business and Chinese.
BSC: Well business worked out well in the end. Are you still fluent?
TV: I used to be good, highly conversational. I stayed in music, moved to London, did a masters of business in music, and continued working full time in that industry until after the pandemic, which I used to launch Hai. I didn’t really like the male-domianted, very commercial music business in London that was all about making money versus in Shanghai it felt like we were doing something good.
BSC: So what would you have majored in at LCF?
TV: Fashion design, definitely fashion design. I really started planning the brand when I was 25, drawing and writing things down, but I kept my full time job until a year and a half ago. It was like living a double life - I’d have orders in my backpack that I’d take to the post office on my break, fulfilling everything myself, and no one had any idea that I was meeting with Browns and Selfridges on my lunch break.
BSC: Isn’t that the best? Living this double life and no one has any idea that you’re basically two different people.
TV: Yeah - it was living a double life. But at that time I was still feeling very insecure about Hai because I don’t have a proper fashion background and I didn’t always know what I was doing. Then Covid hit and work slowed down for me, which gave me more time to spend working on Hai.
But at that time I was still feeling very insecure about Hai because I don’t have a proper fashion background and I didn’t always know what I was doing. Then Covid hit and my company fired so many people, but kept me. It was great! Because I had like one meeting a week, and was still getting income to pay for the flat I had just bought with my boyfriend, and I could spend all of my time on Hai.
BSC: Covid really screwed some people, but at the same time, some people really lucked out.
TV: Yeah and I lucked out big time, it was nice to have the time to focus on the brand. During the pandemic the brand really picked up in China and Korea so I was able to quit my job in Spring of ‘21.
I went back to my parents’ in Shanghai, created two bags that I then brought back to London and started working on. But all revenue had to stay in the company in order for it to grow.
Because what I initially wanted with the idea of Hai was to start as ready-to-wear, but I realized that wasn’t feasible - launching a full collection and working a minimum wage job in the music industry. So we started with bags.
BSC: It’s better to do fewer things well than many things poorly.
TV: My friend Asel Tambay ho is a super talented graphic designer, does a lot of branding for Hai..
BSC: Did she do the logo? I love the logo. It’s so simple.
TV: She did, she does so much of our branding. She’s an art director at the Zak Group in London that handles clients like Prada, Paco Rabanne, Rimowa. She’s incredible. So she helped with ID-ing us.
Then one day I was at a flea market and I saw a silk bag that brought back all these memories of the things my dad would bring back from his trips to Asia and I said, ‘Okay, we’re changing strategies. We’re going to start with bags.’ We mocked up a design for what that would look like, and then found a manufacturer to make the bags that we still actually work with.
I really had to convince the manufacturer to work with me! Because obviously they wanted to know what we were going to do for them, and I said, just trust me. Now they’re so thankful because they’ve had to hire more people just to work on Hai - it’s amazing.
BSC: It’s great when you help other people that took a chance on you. Where are your factories?
TV: This one is in the south of China, and then we get the silk from Suzhou near Shanghai. A twenty minute train ride away. This is all pre-Covid, 2017 and 2018. Then the difficult thing that was happening during Covid was being unable to travel and source materials and find factories, so we started working with a local studio in East London, who are amazing.
Now of course we kind of manufacture all over the world - Romania, France, China, and India now as well.
BSC: India - for textiles and such?
TV: Yes, Our silk is sourced in China but the duppion silk is hand spun in India, and then we often also source deadstock silks from all over the world.
These guys come to London all the time; beautiful embroidery and silks that we’re going to be using for the next collection.
BSC: You’re wearing it right now it seems - aren’t you cold? Or didn’t you say it has both natural cooling and heating ‘mechanisms’?
TV: Yes, it’s a natural fiber so it does both.
BSC: That’s one, very, not-so-hot thing to come out of the pandemic; everyone living in their pajamas and gym clothes.
TV: I don’t own one pair of sweatpants. Exactly zero.
I don’t own one pair of sweatpants. Exactly zero.
BSC: I was recently talking to Paris Starn at a shoot for T Magazine, who although she’s known for her food Instagram and for being a chef, attempted to launch a ready-to-wear line called Paris99 just before the pandemic came crashing down on the world of fashion. And her launch in February of 2019 had great press, but ultimately she had no choice but to shut the clothing line down because as she said, the dresses were not comfortable, and were for wearing when you wanted to be seen - which people neither wanted to be seen or be uncomfortable at any point in the following two years.
TV: I mean I made a pair of pants with a stretch waistband - but they’re still silk. I’ve done them in white and black and it’s pretty much all I wear. They have quite a drop crotch so you can wear them low or high waisted. These look great on everyone and we even have a similar pair with a zipper on the side that my mom and grandmother wear all the time.
BSC: Is that important to you as a brand to make clothes that someone of any age feels comfortable in?
TV: It’s great that someone at any age can wear them comfortably. They’re playful, yes, but they’re very classic and made from good fabrics, good quality materials.
BSC: Because I was scrolling through your ‘Hai Society’ girls on your website and it made me think more about who your market is?
TV: I would say twenties to forties.
BSC: It’s very day-to-night, versatile.
TV: It’s versatile, and that’s what I love so much about being at the shop (New York pop-up). Everyone styles it differently, and it’s so inspiring. And everyone coming in has been really great trying things on and saying how they’d wear it - I’m always taking mental notes. It allows me to see our customers while having a brand that’s mainly online.
BSC: You’re seeing your customer base outside of Korea. Which is far.
TV: So far!
BSC: I guess that’s what Instagram is for - mediating that space between being just an online shopper and a customer with individual tastes and personality.
TV: But it’s still not the same. Instagram is still such a small part of it all.
BSC: Have you thought about your next pop-up?
TV: We’re going to do one in London next, a little longer than this one - maybe two to four months?
BSC: Is that something you would like to do soon?
TV: In the spring, maybe March to June. In Shoreditch, they have a street that’s kind of the equivalent of Elizabeth St. You get tourists and locals.
BSC: And college kids with Guildhall and City College.
TV: Because I think being in (London) Soho is quite different from here, but we are an East London based brand, so I like the idea of keeping the pop-up in East London.
At one point I would love to open a store in Shanghai as well.
BSC: Because it’s so intrinsic to your brand, which by the way, reminds me of this book by Dominique Loreau called L’Art de la Simplicité, that describes her cross cultural journey from France to Japan and discovering the ability to declutter her life physically and mentally along the way.
TV: Wait, I need to write this down. Okay. I must read this. I’m quite a simple person, and you can see it in the clothes as well, how they’re classic. But obviously being around new people and traveling inspires me.
BSC: So you like New York?
TV: I find it a much easier city than London. I’ve been here for three weeks now and every day I like it more and more. Getting around.
BSC: Yes, the NYC MTA is something.
TV: People are much nicer, friendlier, and they’re just more welcoming. In London it’s hard to find friends, but here everyone is just inviting me to dinner!
BSC: These Americans and their post-Covid sensibilities, starved for human interaction, not leaving our houses.
TV: But I miss cooking every meal at home, no (social) pressure at all, none. Now I don’t even have time to cook one meal per week. But in a few years I’m sure we’ll all look back at this quite fondly.
BSC: You’re in your ‘starving artist’ era - not because you’re not doing well, but because you’re just out of time to feed yourself!
TV: My next mission for the year: to relax more. Because Hai has grown quite quickly, just one year ago we were hiring our first employee and now we’re seven and global. And I still oversee everything, all the processes. I need to learn that I don’t need to be there for everything. Our team includes, PR, marketing, do-it-alls, graphic designers, and part-time sales. I’m doing all the wholesale stuff myself and I’ve never done anything like this before!
My next mission for the year: to relax more. Because Hai has grown quite quickly, just one year ago we were hiring our first employee and now we’re seven and global. And I still oversee everything, all the processes. I need to learn that I don’t need to be there for everything. Our team includes, PR, marketing, do-it-alls, graphic designers, and part-time sales. I’m doing all the wholesale stuff myself and I’ve never done anything like this before!
BSC: It’s like they say there’s no better way to learn the language than to move to that country.
TV: Exactly, and I’ve learned so much. But it’s gotten to an overwhelming point. It’s a lot, but it’s good, and no complaining - no complaining. I’m just so very precise and organized.
BSC: And at the rate you’re growing - you can’t put that kind of pressure on one person, which is yourself.
TV: Exactly, that’s why this next year I’m going to take it a little easier.
Tessa Vermeulen gets excited about Hai, and even more so about her New York City pop-up, like a little girl going to the store in mom’s heels and pearls. Consequently, her ready-to-wear collection allows grown women to again feel the giddiness only aroused by mom’s closet, but while remaining chic, oh so chic, and always feeling the softness of silk against skin.
With Hai there’s none of this sweatpants business. Regardless if you choose to lounge around in a silk tank and stretch-waistband pants, it’s still not loungewear. You could just as easily ‘lounge’ in the lobby of the Ritz as your own living room.
Since fully launching Hai last year, Tessa’s life has become ‘bus, club, another club, another club, another club, plane, next place, no sleep.’ Except it’s the Hai remix, which sounds more like, ‘dinner party, photoshoot, another dinner party, another shoot, next pop-up, no sleep, still no sleep.’
But such is the glamorous illusion of fashion, explained here amongst the Au Boulot-clad workers at Cafe Gitane.
TV: I worked in music from when I was 18 - 29
BSC: In what capacity?
TV: Always more on the producing side. It started when I was a teenager in Shanghai working for a promoter that opened an underground nightclub. I DJ’d, there were a lot of fashion events, but this is my past life.
BSC: So you can spin, right? That’s what I’m hearing?
TV: I can, I still can, but the last time I did was probably eight years ago.
BSC: It would be incredibly cool if you did a pop-up and you DJ’d the event.
TV: No, no, no - not gonna happen! Those days have passed, but it was a great learning experience during those days in Shanghai from around 2009-2014 when the music scene was changing and we were bringing in a lot of international artists.
BSC: Did you bring your own cultural heritage to the table in music in Shanghai?
TV: No, not necessarily mine, but mainly electronic music from all over the world. We got the guitarist from Jefferson Airplane even. I had the best time with them. Because I was this nineteen year old girl showing these guys around my Shanghai for four days, and they were playing an intimate venue with only a hundred people. And still the tour manager sent me personal correspondence for years updating me on their tour schedule. You just meet so many people all over the world.
BSC: I’m sure it’s incredibly cool and a little humbling to look back on what you were doing at nineteen, and looking today at the young generation - my generation - knowing that the majority of them can’t begin to compare with the stories you were telling from your own life a decade ago. Most of them don’t do jack.
TV: But no, it was amazing. And I was going to university at the same time which was not that interesting. I went to (primary) school in Holland and then wanted to go to London College of Fashion, but I didn’t even apply because I wanted to take a gap year. Around that time my parents moved to Shanghai, and I decided to spend the year there. But then I fell in love with the city, and I didn’t want to leave. So I had to stay there for school.
But the only major they offered at the University in English was a business degree, so I doubled with business and Chinese.
BSC: Well business worked out well in the end. Are you still fluent?
TV: I used to be good, highly conversational. I stayed in music, moved to London, did a masters of business in music, and continued working full time in that industry until after the pandemic, which I used to launch Hai. I didn’t really like the male-domianted, very commercial music business in London that was all about making money versus in Shanghai it felt like we were doing something good.
BSC: So what would you have majored in at LCF?
TV: Fashion design, definitely fashion design. I really started planning the brand when I was 25, drawing and writing things down, but I kept my full time job until a year and a half ago. It was like living a double life - I’d have orders in my backpack that I’d take to the post office on my break, fulfilling everything myself, and no one had any idea that I was meeting with Browns and Selfridges on my lunch break.
BSC: Isn’t that the best? Living this double life and no one has any idea that you’re basically two different people.
TV: Yeah - it was living a double life. But at that time I was still feeling very insecure about Hai because I don’t have a proper fashion background and I didn’t always know what I was doing. Then Covid hit and work slowed down for me, which gave me more time to spend working on Hai.
But at that time I was still feeling very insecure about Hai because I don’t have a proper fashion background and I didn’t always know what I was doing. Then Covid hit and my company fired so many people, but kept me. It was great! Because I had like one meeting a week, and was still getting income to pay for the flat I had just bought with my boyfriend, and I could spend all of my time on Hai.
BSC: Covid really screwed some people, but at the same time, some people really lucked out.
TV: Yeah and I lucked out big time, it was nice to have the time to focus on the brand. During the pandemic the brand really picked up in China and Korea so I was able to quit my job in Spring of ‘21.
I went back to my parents’ in Shanghai, created two bags that I then brought back to London and started working on. But all revenue had to stay in the company in order for it to grow.
Because what I initially wanted with the idea of Hai was to start as ready-to-wear, but I realized that wasn’t feasible - launching a full collection and working a minimum wage job in the music industry. So we started with bags.
BSC: It’s better to do fewer things well than many things poorly.
TV: My friend Asel Tambay ho is a super talented graphic designer, does a lot of branding for Hai..
BSC: Did she do the logo? I love the logo. It’s so simple.
TV: She did, she does so much of our branding. She’s an art director at the Zak Group in London that handles clients like Prada, Paco Rabanne, Rimowa. She’s incredible. So she helped with ID-ing us.
Then one day I was at a flea market and I saw a silk bag that brought back all these memories of the things my dad would bring back from his trips to Asia and I said, ‘Okay, we’re changing strategies. We’re going to start with bags.’ We mocked up a design for what that would look like, and then found a manufacturer to make the bags that we still actually work with.
I really had to convince the manufacturer to work with me! Because obviously they wanted to know what we were going to do for them, and I said, just trust me. Now they’re so thankful because they’ve had to hire more people just to work on Hai - it’s amazing.
BSC: It’s great when you help other people that took a chance on you. Where are your factories?
TV: This one is in the south of China, and then we get the silk from Suzhou near Shanghai. A twenty minute train ride away. This is all pre-Covid, 2017 and 2018. Then the difficult thing that was happening during Covid was being unable to travel and source materials and find factories, so we started working with a local studio in East London, who are amazing.
Now of course we kind of manufacture all over the world - Romania, France, China, and India now as well.
BSC: India - for textiles and such?
TV: Yes, Our silk is sourced in China but the duppion silk is hand spun in India, and then we often also source deadstock silks from all over the world.
These guys come to London all the time; beautiful embroidery and silks that we’re going to be using for the next collection.
BSC: You’re wearing it right now it seems - aren’t you cold? Or didn’t you say it has both natural cooling and heating ‘mechanisms’?
TV: Yes, it’s a natural fiber so it does both.
BSC: That’s one, very, not-so-hot thing to come out of the pandemic; everyone living in their pajamas and gym clothes.
TV: I don’t own one pair of sweatpants. Exactly zero.
I don’t own one pair of sweatpants. Exactly zero.
BSC: I was recently talking to Paris Starn at a shoot for T Magazine, who although she’s known for her food Instagram and for being a chef, attempted to launch a ready-to-wear line called Paris99 just before the pandemic came crashing down on the world of fashion. And her launch in February of 2019 had great press, but ultimately she had no choice but to shut the clothing line down because as she said, the dresses were not comfortable, and were for wearing when you wanted to be seen - which people neither wanted to be seen or be uncomfortable at any point in the following two years.
TV: I mean I made a pair of pants with a stretch waistband - but they’re still silk. I’ve done them in white and black and it’s pretty much all I wear. They have quite a drop crotch so you can wear them low or high waisted. These look great on everyone and we even have a similar pair with a zipper on the side that my mom and grandmother wear all the time.
BSC: Is that important to you as a brand to make clothes that someone of any age feels comfortable in?
TV: It’s great that someone at any age can wear them comfortably. They’re playful, yes, but they’re very classic and made from good fabrics, good quality materials.
BSC: Because I was scrolling through your ‘Hai Society’ girls on your website and it made me think more about who your market is?
TV: I would say twenties to forties.
BSC: It’s very day-to-night, versatile.
TV: It’s versatile, and that’s what I love so much about being at the shop (New York pop-up). Everyone styles it differently, and it’s so inspiring. And everyone coming in has been really great trying things on and saying how they’d wear it - I’m always taking mental notes. It allows me to see our customers while having a brand that’s mainly online.
BSC: You’re seeing your customer base outside of Korea. Which is far.
TV: So far!
BSC: I guess that’s what Instagram is for - mediating that space between being just an online shopper and a customer with individual tastes and personality.
TV: But it’s still not the same. Instagram is still such a small part of it all.
BSC: Have you thought about your next pop-up?
TV: We’re going to do one in London next, a little longer than this one - maybe two to four months?
BSC: Is that something you would like to do soon?
TV: In the spring, maybe March to June. In Shoreditch, they have a street that’s kind of the equivalent of Elizabeth St. You get tourists and locals.
BSC: And college kids with Guildhall and City College.
TV: Because I think being in (London) Soho is quite different from here, but we are an East London based brand, so I like the idea of keeping the pop-up in East London.
At one point I would love to open a store in Shanghai as well.
BSC: Because it’s so intrinsic to your brand, which by the way, reminds me of this book by Dominique Loreau called L’Art de la Simplicité, that describes her cross cultural journey from France to Japan and discovering the ability to declutter her life physically and mentally along the way.
TV: Wait, I need to write this down. Okay. I must read this. I’m quite a simple person, and you can see it in the clothes as well, how they’re classic. But obviously being around new people and traveling inspires me.
BSC: So you like New York?
TV: I find it a much easier city than London. I’ve been here for three weeks now and every day I like it more and more. Getting around.
BSC: Yes, the NYC MTA is something.
TV: People are much nicer, friendlier, and they’re just more welcoming. In London it’s hard to find friends, but here everyone is just inviting me to dinner!
BSC: These Americans and their post-Covid sensibilities, starved for human interaction, not leaving our houses.
TV: But I miss cooking every meal at home, no (social) pressure at all, none. Now I don’t even have time to cook one meal per week. But in a few years I’m sure we’ll all look back at this quite fondly.
BSC: You’re in your ‘starving artist’ era - not because you’re not doing well, but because you’re just out of time to feed yourself!
TV: My next mission for the year: to relax more. Because Hai has grown quite quickly, just one year ago we were hiring our first employee and now we’re seven and global. And I still oversee everything, all the processes. I need to learn that I don’t need to be there for everything. Our team includes, PR, marketing, do-it-alls, graphic designers, and part-time sales. I’m doing all the wholesale stuff myself and I’ve never done anything like this before!
My next mission for the year: to relax more. Because Hai has grown quite quickly, just one year ago we were hiring our first employee and now we’re seven and global. And I still oversee everything, all the processes. I need to learn that I don’t need to be there for everything. Our team includes, PR, marketing, do-it-alls, graphic designers, and part-time sales. I’m doing all the wholesale stuff myself and I’ve never done anything like this before!
BSC: It’s like they say there’s no better way to learn the language than to move to that country.
TV: Exactly, and I’ve learned so much. But it’s gotten to an overwhelming point. It’s a lot, but it’s good, and no complaining - no complaining. I’m just so very precise and organized.
BSC: And at the rate you’re growing - you can’t put that kind of pressure on one person, which is yourself.
TV: Exactly, that’s why this next year I’m going to take it a little easier.
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